


Gold to Iron

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: :'(, Angst, Celebrimbor is An Angel, Eregion, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mairon Can't Just Let Himself Be Happy, Pain, Romance, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 23:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16650040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: He screamed, and from him came such a sound that chilled to the bone all those asleep in Eregion.***Mairon hesitates, but for a moment.





	Gold to Iron

The Alchemy of Sorrow

(Poem Excerpt by Charles Baudelaire)

***

for ‘tis through thee I turn my gold

to iron, and in heaven behold

my hell: beneath the cloud-palls I

 

uncover corpses loved of old;

and where the shores celestial die

I carve vast tombs against the sky.

***

 

I.

There is only Darkness. Darkness surrounded Him, circled Him, violated His thoughts and held Him tightly within its unyielding grasp like the cold raking fingers of a stiffened corpse. From Him the Darkness bled every thought, every fear, every pain. It defiled Him, it wormed its way into the shattered remains of His body and His final broken fragments of thought, squirming deep within His psyche and leeching what little strength He had left to resist its ever-probing hands.

He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t _breathe._ He was gasping, He knew He was gasping, yet, no sound fell from His lips and each inhale only served to pull the Darkness further into His lungs to writhe inside of Him, to burrow deeper and take root within the depths His core. And He was powerless to stop it from overtaking Him, unable to control His lungs which, in their desperation, violently spasmed, searching for just a single draught of something other than the horrid Darkness, the horrid Darkness which it only served to pull further within.

Panic coursed within Him, hot and thrilling, even when He knew what He had to expect, even when He knew He could scarce fight it, let alone flee. His Hröa would die, ragged and discoloured from being so long deprived, but His spirit could not be sundered from it, could not be freed from its abused anchor. He would recover enough to revive Himself, then gasp for air- only to imbibe more Darkness and die once more. Over and over and over and over in an endless cyclic torment.

He thrashed within His chains, within the shell of His own Hröa, already fading, no longer responding, the muscles quivering under flesh and nerves frayed and numb. He thrashed and screamed, screamed even as His lungs gave their last violent shudder, even as the blood ran from His mouth and He could bear it no longer, hearing the nothingness despite the noise in His head.

The little hazy sparks drove Him mad, never taking form and remaining abstract, colourful patterns lingering in His peripheral, teasing Him, tormenting Him with their allure. His eyes, when they could move, followed them constantly, feverishly, turning them thither and thus to tail them in demented pursuit. But did His pupils chase them really, or was it the mere thought of light, so fleeting?

His head spun, a kaleidoscope of twisting, churning hallucinations- was it His head He felt, all amiss? Or was it the memory of sensation, an imprint His Fëa still held of another time, another place? Nausea gripped Him, tighter than the chains of Angainor, tighter than the blight of Darkness gauging within Him. This dizziness radiated with His flailing pulse, surged slow and sharp from the epicenter of His spine wherein the ridges some last nerve, some thread of life was being wrenched.

Some last strength within Him returned. If He could not attack the Darkness, could not catch the light, then He would give Himself a pain He could control, a burrowing within Himself that He consented to. So He dug His nails into His own arms where they were crossed over His heaving chest, revelled in the flesh that parted for Him and the rest within that He sliced.

But there was only the Darkness, and it greedly supped on this last burst, and finally it was that He hung limp within its crushing hold. At last His body was still and silent in some unnatural way, a strained and twisted contortion, all motionless but so full of force until the tetanus gave way to subtle convulsions that died off entirely.

He no longer offered the Darkness any resistance.

 

II.

He screamed, and from him came such a sound that chilled to the bone all those asleep in Eregion.

His transition from the Void in his vision to his reality on Arda was not smooth- whatever power had given it to him willed it so the nothingness too quickly distorted to brilliant, piercing colour and sharp, unkind shapes and an ear-splitting cacophony. He thrashed, his Fëa panicking, trying to find sturdy anchorage again on the earth, his Fána struggling for breath, lungs burning with the effort. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and down his face and he desperately clawed the sheets.

Such was how Celebrimbor found him.

From his view, there was Annatar, arched off the bed, convulsions wrecking his slight frame, muscles strained and twitching, his whole body shaking with some unnamed fear. His nightgown stuck to him, soaked through with sweat, his chest struggling to push the air out of him, quivering in a long, shaking inhalation that whistled like the thin howl of wind in some narrow mountain-pass. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing within the room, and tears blurred them, but in them would be a look that the Lord of Eregion would never forget, that would haunt him even in the Halls of Mandos.

Such _pain._ Nothing could describe the terror enwritten in those eyes.

Immediately he ran over to him not knowing what to do, and brushed the hair from his face, and sat him up in the bed with him, and in Quenya, begged him to breathe, to snap out of his trance. He was burning, almost like the heat he often felt first coming into his forge, such that it nearly singed him. But he held onto the Maia, rubbing his back, shaking him, waving in front of his eyes- anything to get him to snap from his dream until at last the air rushed from his lungs as if it had been knocked from him.

The elf lord trembled with relief, sat the Maia up again and let his head rest on his shoulder. His breathing was ragged, loud and much too quick and shallow. But his hands clutched onto Celebrimbor’s clothes and his eyes blinked free from their trance, and he had air enough to sob. So he stayed there, and guided him to breathing normally again, until he stopped choking on his cries and stilled and was once again tense.

Celebrimbor stroked the damp black hair from his face, knowing what he was thinking. The Maia had a pride of his own, and in much of his interactions with others he remained aloof, untouchable and as distant as the stars. But to the Lord of Eregion he had taught the incredible skills of his craft, and much time they had spent together, enough for him to know that Annatar was _ashamed_ to have lost control, despite the fear that still made him shake, despite the tears that still fell from his eyes.

And yet, he took the goblet from the elf when offered, let him clean his face of sweat and tears and the blood that had leaked from his nose and had streaked across his cheeks from the piercing of his ears. He was too tired, too weak, too shocked to shun his comfort, and too numb to think of anything but curling in further to the sturdy muscles of Fëanor’s grandson, to the curtain of his hair, raven-black, to his dark eyes and pale skin. Even he could pretend.

And he did not intend, but the words came out, and he told the elf of the Ainu that had visited him in the forges of Aulë, how He would sit near to him and watch him work, how they would speak for hours. He told him of the things they made for each other, told him of the world when it was still dark and the stars were still being made and how it felt as if they two were the only beings to exist. He told him of the brilliance of volcanic eruptions that they would watch, told him of the gems they would find together in the caverns of the earth. He told them of what it felt to be sundered from that which he was so severely bound to, of being torn apart at the soul.

It was only by fate that the name of that Ainu was never spoken in his rambling, and only Celebrimbor’s pity at his friend’s suffering that stopped him from asking more. And it was a fatal assumption for the elf-Lord to think that it was simply another innocent Maia that had been lost fighting the armies of Morgoth in the War of Wrath.

But finally he was calmed, and though Annatar would hate himself in after days, he took great comfort in the kiss that the Celebrimbor pressed to his temple before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

III.

But secrets have a way of being revealed, and Annatar’s secret was no different.

And so, he stood before Celebrimbor who was seated and chained, and he revealed to him his true form and his true name, and that Annatar was a form in the memory of He who he loved most, He whom the elves named Morgoth.

But Celebrimbor did not lose hope and through the long hours of torture he would only reveal the sixteen. Even Mairon could see he would not reveal the other three rings to him, and he found he was unable to leave a mark on the body that had comforted him, that had reminded him of one other, though he would never admit such.

So Celebrimbor lay starved and cold and listened long to the screams of other elves as they met their last breath. Yet through it all he did not lose hope, and through it all he pleaded as though the Maia could still be saved from the pain that was to come.

And Mairon released him, and still the elf could see Annatar that night, and those eyes filled with pain and fear, and he embraced him, and stroked his hair as he had often done, though now it fell in copper waves rather than black. There was a long moment like this, a hesitation. But still the blade plunged through his chest, and Mairon lowered him to the ground as the blood pooled around him.

Secrets have a way of being revealed, and Celebrimbor, before the end, revealed one. _Those three I made for you as a gift, and I would have given them freely to you upon your return._ And Mairon could feel his last breath upon his lips, and could feel the tears come unbidden down his face.

 

IV.

When the elves of Middle Earth finally took down the body of Celebrimbor from the frame of Sauron’s war banner, the significance of his wounds were not lost on them. For his feet had been cut off, and his hands had been burned. Seven slashes cut through his body and there were four on his face.

But to the confusion of all, they found that he had been cleaned and groomed, and his wounds were stitched precisely and neatly. Such care had all been unneeded, for strangely indeed these wounds had only been inflicted post-mortem.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I don't quite know why but I had a sudden desire or drive to write this, but I did. I don't know if I'm quite happy with it but my muse wanted to, so I just went with it, haha. The thing I'm most unsure about is Celebrimbor's hopefulness in the end, but the dude's in love with a psychopath and can't see it :(  
> I don't know what it is about Mairon and his servants these last two weeks but it's what I've been thinking a lot about. I don't really think that Mairon ever loved Angmar (I think he took him for granted tbh), but I think that he did love Celebrimbor in his own screwed up "pretending you're Melkor but you're not and that's just an excuse to love you" type way. If that makes any sense!  
> Really would like to know what you think about this one since it was kind of spontaneous or an experiment, if you would. Are they too out-of-character?  
> Also, I'm starting to feel bad about being so brutal to Melkor in the void, damn.  
> ***


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